“We were farmers before we were vignerons” Pierre-Andre and Anne Deplaude like to say with no small measure of pride.It’s often said that wines are made in the vineyard, not in the winery. This is of course a simplification but we’ve always liked working with those vignerons with big callused hands from the field, not cravats and suits, so imagine how happy when we stumbled on wines being made by people in love with the idea of polyculture, that wine was just a part of their farm.

When Pierre-Andre and Anne started to farm in the out of the way Coteaux-Du-Gier somewhere between Lyon and Clermont-Ferrand wine wasn’t a priority, instead it was grains, fruits and dairy cows, as well as a tiny production of wines. This kept going until the early 2000s when a drop in milk prices forced them to rethink a few things, and they decided to take some of their most interesting land and convert it to vineyards.​What didn’t change was the commitment to be farmers first, to work the land honestly and responsibly and have the product reflect that, be it wine or milk. When Guilhaume, Michael and I first tasted these wines we were amazed to be drinking such pure terroir driven wines from a region we hadn’t even heard of days before.